According to the USDA, almost half of the food transported, grown, and processed in the USA goes to waste. With so many hungry people out there, and the human population putting such a strain on the environment, it is a waste of our resources to be throwing away food.
In an effort to live more sustainably, I’ve made a conscious effort to decrease our household food waste. It’s been a pretty easy and successful journey and has gone really hand-in-hand with living a zero waste lifestyle. I have realized that some ways to prevent food waste are to be prepared before you go the grocery store, while other ways to prevent food waste occur when you are inside the store. Here are my tips for preventing food waste.
Meal plan
Before you set out for the grocery store, sit down and plan out your meals for the week. I like to pick out a few key recipes to act as the glue to hold my meals together, and rely on leftovers for lunch. This will send you food shopping with a plan in mind and prevent you from purchasing food impulsively.
I like to use the app Google Keep to make my grocery list. It allows multiple phones to access and edit the list. This is super handy if you have multiple people in your household responsible for shopping,
Assess your refrigerator/pantry
Again, before you set out for the grocery store, go through your refrigerator and/or pantry and assess what you have in stock. Do you have a jar of pinto beans that have been sitting on your shelf for a year, untouched? Maybe it’s time to find a recipe that will use those bad boys up (and maybe you don’t need to replace them). Is there a head of broccoli in your vegetable drawer still waiting to get eaten? That means you don’t need another one.
Stick to your list
When you get to the grocery store, avoid impulse buying by sticking to your list. Aside from the obvious thing that you forgot to add (which happens to me every week), don’t make any last-minute or impulsive purchases that might end up going bad or sitting on your shelf for years.
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Want more tips on how to prevent food waste? Check out my blog post from 2017 titled How to Combat Food Waste Using Your Freezer.
Good article and thanks for referring back to the freezer article! I should do that more. Do you know of any online guide re what fruits and vegetables can and cannot be frozen successfully?